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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
Oakland, CA, United States, 10/24/2006 - Gerard Lee, AIA NCARB has recently achieved LEED v2.1 professional accreditation. Gerard Lee Architects announces post occupancy evaluation program to better serve our clients in support of sustainable projects..
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Gerard Lee Architects has been pursuing sustainability since the inception of the firm. The principal and founder, Gerard Lee, AIA, has been a student and practitioner of sustainability throughout his architectural career and has incorporated sustainable design strategies in many of his projects.
In an effort to help clients define what exactly “green” is and how sustainable their projects are after completion, GLA believes that incorporating the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification process into the “greening” process is a step in the right direction. In an effort to support this decision, Gerard Lee, AIA has just recently become a LEED v2.1 accredited professional. Having a principal member of the design team that is LEED accredited, will enable the design team to navigate the LEED certification process smoothly and in addition, earns one credit.
Having been a project manager/ principal on a number of LEED registered projects, Gerard Lee has incorporated special procedures within the firm that will enable better coordination among the design team and client representatives.
In addition to being a LEED accredited firm, we believe that buildings need to be sustainable, function well, perform and be comfortable. Aesthetics are a given. Therefore we have created a firm wide program to evaluate post occupancy performance on all our projects. This program will require our project designers and managers to follow up with our clients during the initial move in and after the first year of occupancy, conduct an end user post occupancy survey. It is an informal survey that evaluates end users perceptions about comfort and functionality.
This will enable us to evaluate our design decisions and to continually educate and improve on our designs. It is part of our effort to instill better long term services for our clients. While winning design awards is great, we believe that design quality based just on aesthetics does not sufficiently evaluate how a building really performs. We support a design award that would be evidentiary based in addition to how a building appears. Human comfort, functionality, sustainability and energy efficiency are all factors that should be considered alongside beauty. Additionally there are verification surveys that can be performed by certain organizations to measure and verify a buildings energy performance. GLA is able to refer these services for our clients to better understand their savings earned by going "green".
By supporting the LEED process and incorporating post occupancy evaluations, Gerard Lee Architects, intends to continuously create innovative designs by looking to the future and while learning from our past.
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